Pro-Life, Pro-Choice: Shared Values in the Abortion Debate

By Bertha Alvarez Manninen

In this provocative and accessible book, the author defends a pro-choice perspective but also takes seriously pro-life concerns about the moral value of the human fetus, questioning whether a fetus is nothing more than "mere tissue." She examines the legal status of the fetus in the recent Personhood Amendments in state legislatures and in Supreme Court decisions and asks whether Roe v. Wade should have focused on the viability of the fetus or on the bodily integrity of the woman.

Manninen approaches the abortion controversy through a variety of perspectives and ethical frameworks. She addresses the social circumstances that influence many women's decision to abort and considers whether we believe that there are good and bad reasons to abort. Manninen also looks at the call for post-abortion fetal grieving rituals for women who desire them and the attempt to make room in the pro-choice position for the views of prospective fathers.

The author spells out how the two sides demonize each other and proposes ways to find degrees of convergence between the seemingly intractable positions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
• Release date: Sep 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9780826502926

Bertha Alvarez Manninen

Bertha Alvarez Manninen is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Arizona State University.

Book preview

PRO-LIFE, PRO-CHOICE

PRO-LIFE, PRO-CHOICE

SHARED VALUES IN THE ABORTION DEBATE

BERTHA ALVAREZ MANNINEN

VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY PRESS

Nashville

© 2014 by Vanderbilt University Press

Nashville, Tennessee 37235

All rights reserved

First printing 2014

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file

LC control number 2013034847

LC classification number HQ767.5.U5M34 2014

Dewey class number 179.7'60973–dc23

ISBN 978-0-8265-1990-0 (cloth)

ISBN 978-0-8265-1991-7 (paperback)

ISBN 978-0-8265-1992-4 (ebook)

For my daughters, Michelle and Julia, who have given me new eyes with which to view and interpret the world.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction and Background

1. Why Roe v. Wade’s Argument Fails

2. Responsibility and Other Worries

3. Of Women and Fetuses: Battling the False Dichotomy

4. Pro-Choice, Not Pro-Abortion: Rethinking the Pro-Choice Strategy

5. A Pro-Choice Moral Framework

6. Respecting Fetal Life and Pregnant Women: Building upon Shared Values

7. The Forgotten Father: Men and Abortion

Conclusion

Notes

Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The production of this book would not have been possible had it not been for the combined efforts of so many people. I would like to first thank Michael Ames, my editor, for his indispensable comments, remarkable patience and good will, and dedication to seeing the book come to fruition, as well as Joell Smith-Borne, Meg Wallace, Dariel Mayer, and Silvia Benvenuto, who were instrumental in its production. I also owe much gratitude to Jackie Gately, who guided me through earlier incarnations of the manuscript and helped me edit it into its final form. Along the way I have enjoyed conversations with many colleagues who have influenced this writing: Nina Anton, Sasha Billbe, Andrew Brei, Monica Casper, Shari Collins, Ryan Ehrfurth, Bonnie Jean Kurle, Shannon Lank, Heather Libby, Kurt Liebegott, Sheila Lintott, Jack Mulder, Melissa Manchester Mulder, Nathan Nobis, Kate Padgett Walsh, Michael Paradiso-Michau, Leticia Sanchez, Maureen Sander-Staudt, Allan Sawyer, Kevin Sharpe, Marlene Tromp, Shalon Amber van Tine, and Eric Thomas Weber. My apologies to anyone I may have inadvertently left out.

As they often do, many of my teachers have also played an indispensable role. Martin Curd, William McBride, Patrick Kain, and Mark Bernstein all helped to sow the seeds that ultimately led here. Carmela McIntire and Lisa Blansett, thank you for keeping my love of writing and literature alive during my philosophical studies. And finally, thank you to Paul Draper who was my first and only bioethics teacher—and one of the best teachers I had throughout my entire college experience. Any success I ultimately achieve has its roots in your guidance, patience, and mentoring during my youth and in subsequent years.

I would also like to thank the administration at Arizona State University’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies for their continued financial and emotional support. I am also very grateful to the Center for Critical Inquiry and Cultural Studies at Arizona State University for financially supporting the costs of producing this manuscript via their book subvention award.

Then there are my students, who keep my mind fresh and my heart fulfilled. Their questions and challenges over the years have helped shape all of my research in some way. They have taught me as much as I have taught them.

I would like to thank my family and friends, who have supported all of my academic endeavors and have kept me grounded, and especially my husband, Tuomas, whose support, friendship, and companionship has been invaluable throughout my education and career. And finally there are my children, Michelle and Julia, who were always there waiting for me when I got home after a long day of writing with hugs, kisses, and the energy, magic, imagination, and love that only comes with childhood.

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

My personal views about abortion have changed throughout the years. As a teenager, being the product of a Catholic home, I was very prolife. I believed that the fetus is a person from the moment of conception and that its right to life trumps the bodily rights of women. While I conceded (with hesitation) that abortions are permissible in cases when the mother’s life is threatened, I did not make any allowances for fetuses created through rape or incest.

In college I took classes in applied ethics and bioethics, and was introduced in each class to Judith Jarvis Thomson’s influential article A Defense of Abortion, in which she argues that even if the fetus is considered a person with all the moral rights thereof, this does not mean a woman can be compelled to gestate it. This is because no person’s right to life imposes an obligation upon others to make large bodily sacrifices in order to respect that right. After much inner turmoil, Thomson’s argument convinced me, and I spent the remainder of my college and graduate school career being very ardently prochoice. In my dissertation, I argued that embryos and fetuses possessed no moral standing until at least midgestation because it is only then that they acquire the necessary neural apparatus for conscious awareness, and that early- to midpregnancy abortions are no different from using contraception because both methods prevent the existence of a human person.

On Saturday, May 10, 2008—the day before Mother’s Day—I discovered I was pregnant with my first child. Twelve weeks later we had our first ultrasound, and I was in awe of how much was happening inside my body even though I could not feel it. As the technician talked to my husband and me and assured us that the pregnancy was progressing well, I watched my little fetus somersault around in my belly. I couldn’t believe she could do so much at such a young age. During the drive home I stared at my first ultrasound picture and heard a voice in my head that was utterly foreign to me given the beliefs I had held for the previous ten years: I could never bring myself to abort this fetus, and abortion, I found myself thinking, is certainly not akin to contraception.

The months that followed continually reaffirmed my newfound respect for fetal life; every kick, every movement, every reaction to her father’s voice incited a sense of awe. I realized that regardless of the myriad philosophical debates concerning fetal personhood, once I was pregnant very little of it mattered. Gestating my daughter did something for me that no amount of studying was able to do: it forced me to look at pregnancy, birthing, and abortion as real issues in the lives of real people, including both women and fetuses.

I was torn, so in my mind I recounted all the reasons I identified as prochoice. I still believe that abortion choice is an essential aspect of women’s reproductive freedom. In order for women to get ahead in terms of their education and careers they have to be free to obtain an abortion if they ever become pregnant before they are ready to become mothers. Raped women should not be forced to gestate a fetus that is a permanent reminder of the violence and violation they endured. Motherhood is such an identity-altering role that it must be one that women choose for themselves. Children should be born into a home where they are wanted and cared for, and to parents who are secure enough in their lives to provide for them materially and emotionally. The consequences of criminalizing abortion will not be an explosion of healthy babies being born to happy mothers, but rather the death of fetuses and women at the hands of illegal abortion providers—indeed, almost half of abortions around the world take place in countries with restrictive abortion laws. Finally, Thomson’s argument still rings true to me: I cannot endorse any policy that compels one subset of the population to give their bodies over in a physically demanding, intimate, and potentially dangerous way in order to sustain the lives of another subset of the population.

Nevertheless, I could no longer justify my position by dehumanizing fetuses, by writing them off as mere masses of cells and tissue that have no value. I forced myself to look at abortion pictures and videos because I could not continue to support something without facing its ugliest and most graphic side. It is hard to deny that even a late-first-trimester abortion destroys something that is human and looks like a very small and underdeveloped baby. And although I could not bring myself to believe that a human zygote or early embryo is equivalent in moral status and rights to a born child or to the woman who is gestating it, the line that demarcates when the fetus becomes an entity worthy of moral status is not at all obvious. There has to be a way, I thought, that these views can live in harmony. It must be possible to be prochoice and still believe wholeheartedly that fetal life is valuable.

I decided to take my struggles and ambivalence into my academic world, and the response, initially, was unfavorable. Although I remained a supporter of abortion choice, I expressed to several of my colleagues and peers my concern about the prevalence of abortion and the wanton attitude many (though certainly not all) abortion rights supporters take in regard to fetal life. Comments such as these have often attracted criticism. The most scathing instance of this was at a conference when I delivered a short essay suggesting that prochoice advocates should acknowledge that fetal life has value. My commentator, who participated in marches to legalize abortion in the 1970s, reacted very negatively. Acknowledging the value of fetal life, she maintained, would cause the women’s movement to regress and would disrespect the sacrifices made by women before me that had allowed me my liberation and the right to control my reproductive life. She said that if my suggestion were adopted, it would mean the downfall of the prochoice movement.

Similarly, when I confess that I am prochoice, I am immediately met with accusations that I endorse the killing of babies. I have been called a murderer, antibaby, antifamily, and proabortion. I’ve been told that I probably stand in front of abortion clinics and celebrate the killing of babies, that I would probably try to get pregnant just to be able to abort and see what it felt like.

My position, therefore, has struggled to find a home in traditional abortion polemics.

Because the conversations did not seem productive, I stopped trying to share my views with others and withdrew into the privacy of my own research. There had to be other women, other prochoice philosophers and academics, who felt as I did. Where were the articles and books that do not get assigned in typical applied ethics courses; essays that carefully navigate the difficult emotional minefield that is abortion without making it seem that the answers to the tough questions are abundantly clear?

I was surprised and happy to find a healthy body of literature from feminist philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists who are prochoice yet believe that intrauterine life is worthy of respect and that some instances of abortion choice have ambiguous dimensions. Examples of such essays abound throughout this book. One of the most influential for me is Frances Kissling’s "Is There Life After Roe? in which she encourages prochoice feminists to illustrate respect for nascent human life: Why should we allow this value to be owned by those opposed to abortion? Are we not capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time; of valuing life and respecting women’s rights? Have we not ceded too much territory to antiabortionists by not articulating the value of fetal life?"¹

I decided to take these questions to my students. Only a handful of them clearly identified with one view over the other, and the vast majority of them, both men and women, were tired of the traditional abortion rhetoric. They did not feel like either side adequately captured their views. Students who supported abortion choice repeatedly pointed out that there is more to the conversation than just whether abortion should be legal. There are ethical dimensions to that choice and instances of abortion that can be classified as morally dubious that prochoice advocates seemed hesitant to discuss. One student put it this way: If you get an abortion to take care of your kids, or finish school, I’m with you—I have your back. But don’t get an abortion and act like it’s just an operation—like you’re removing a mole or something. Another student commented: "I don’t want to say that you can’t get an abortion, but there are times when I really think you shouldn’t. I don’t know if that makes sense." It made sense to me, but the fact that this student and others had such a hard time accepting that such a view can be intelligible helped me realize that much philosophical literature on abortion is out of touch with these kinds of concerns.

What started in an ultrasound room five years ago has led me here. This book is my attempt to offer a philosophical justification of my current view on abortion: I defend a prochoice position and yet acknowledge that there is much more to the ethical debate than simply a question of rights.

I begin by calling attention to the myriad recent attempts to pass personhood amendments in various U.S. states in order to codify into law the view that from the time of conception embryos and fetuses are persons, with all the legal rights thereof. The intent of those who advocate passage of these amendments is to create sufficient controversy and opposition to force the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit Roe v. Wade and overturn it. For reasons I will explain, the arguments used in favor of abortion rights by the justices who decided Roe are indeed susceptible to collapse if the human fetus is granted the rights of persons. Pro-choice advocates need to be more vigilant concerning the repeated attempts to pass such amendments, and they should arm themselves with a defense of abortion rights that would survive scrutiny in the face of a successful state-turned-federal personhood amendment.

I then proceed to develop and defend Thomson’s moral argument in favor of abortion rights, but I also illustrate that her thesis has important legal implications. Thomson’s position, I believe, renders the abortion right impervious to personhood amendments, yet it also paves the way for the argument that supporting abortion rights need not entail devaluing the lives of fetuses. While I could never endorse a law or policy that would compel unwilling people to donate blood or nonvital organs to save the lives of those who need a transplant, this does not mean that the lives of those who are ailing are devoid of moral status and worth. Abortion can thus be defended by an appeal to bodily autonomy, and yet we can still respect fetal life and feel some degree of loss at its demise. An appeal to bodily autonomy does not mean endorsing a laissez-faire position on abortion rights that asserts a woman’s right to abort a fetus whenever she wishes, even in later gestational stages.

Next I explore many of the issues that have come up during my years of researching and teaching abortion ethics. I tackle the pervasive dehumanization and disrespect of both pregnant women and fetuses. Abortion choice supporters sometimes use terminology meant to detract from the fetus’s humanity (uterine material, products of conception), while abortion choice detractors sometimes regard women who obtain abortion as sexually promiscuous, irresponsible, callous murderers. Some abortion rhetoric dichotomizes women and fetuses, painting them as adversaries. This happens often through images in which fetuses are typically portrayed as free-floating infants, existing independently of the human bodies who nurture them. I propose ways in which abortion rights supporters can use images in a manner that stresses the interdependent relationship between the woman and the fetus and, in turn, contextualizes abortion as a very personal and emotional issue with important social causes and implications.

In every one of my classes where I teach abortion ethics, I make it a point to stress that prochoice is not synonymous with proabortion. Here I untangle the use of these terms, and provide evidence that those who support abortion choice do not necessarily tout abortion as a cause for celebration. I focus on the concerns of women who either have obtained abortions or support women’s ability to choose to do so, and yet regard fetuses as deserving of respect. This sentiment is increasingly prevalent among the younger prochoice generation, and it is vital that the prochoice community defend abortion in a manner that will resonate with them. Contrary to the worry that doing so will adversely affect abortion rights, the unwillingness to humanize the fetus is turning people away from the prochoice community. This is recognized even by members of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (also known as NARAL Pro-Choice America): NARAL pollster Anna Greenberg encourages the prochoice community to recognize the moral complexity of abortion so the right to abortion will not, as journalist Sarah Kliff puts it, fade away with postmenopausal militia.²

Next I make the case for a standard by which we can judge the moral dimensions of individual abortion decisions without encroaching on the right to obtain one. Throughout Leslie Cannold’s research on the similarities and differences in pro- and anti-choice women’s attitudes toward abortion, she notes that many in the former group wish to engage in a different kind of conversation that goes beyond the language of rights: For many prochoice supporters, the thunder of many of these unanswerable questions has simply become too loud to ignore: are there ‘irresponsible’ pregnancies? Which reasons for having an abortion are bad ones? Does the fetus matter, how much, and why? Even if women have a right to choose abortion, is it always right for them to do so?³ Here, I provide a moral framework for addressing these sorts of questions by appealing to virtue and care ethics. These moral theories, in addition to being action-centered, are primarily agent-centered, so they take into account a person’s motivations, reasoning process, and the virtues or vices she is manifesting when acting in certain ways. Abortion decisions that manifest care, respect for fetal life, and responsibility can be deemed morally good, whereas abortion decisions that manifest callousness or irresponsibility would be deemed, at best, morally dubious.

This kind of judgment is not limited to abortion rights; many of the rights we possess can face similar scrutiny. We all have a right to free speech, for example, but surely there is a difference between exercising that right by spreading messages of love and acceptance and hiding behind the freedom of speech to advertise prejudice and hate. We all have a right to use our money in any legal manner we see fit, but it would be deeply wrong to taunt homeless people by waving our dollars bills in front of them. There is a distinction, therefore, between holding that we have certain rights, and maintaining that we are using those rights well.

Another theme that repeatedly arises in Cannold’s interviews is that an ideal society would illustrate respect for both fetuses and pregnant women by helping women who experience unplanned pregnancies to keep and raise their children if they so wish. This shared value can be a springboard toward some degree of convergence, and I discuss some ways to achieve this from a prochoice perspective. I first explore ways in which the prochoice community can embrace and care for women who feel loss or grief after an abortion. Such care dispels the stereotype that prochoice advocates regard abortion wantonly and fetal death as inconsequential. Acknowledging the validity of post-abortion sorrow simultaneously acknowledges the worth of what was lost.

Second, I address the manner in which some abortion rights detractors attempt to counsel women who are grieving after abortion in ways that only agitate them and exploit their heartache; providing a prochoice alternative to post-abortion grieving may better serve the emotional state of these women. In addition to quality pre- and post-abortion counseling, mourning rituals targeting loss of pregnancy due to abortion or miscarriage can be an incredibly useful tool to help women and men struggling in the emotional aftermath of their loss.

I also discuss empirical evidence that certain social programs, such as easy access to effective contraception and financial safety nets designed to care for women and children, can go a long way toward curbing the occurrence of abortion and helping struggling young and single mothers to step off the treadmill of poverty to which they are often tethered.

Years ago a male student confided in me that his girlfriend had obtained an abortion against his consent and that the loss of his child (as he put it) haunted him every day. Because of this conversation and more like it that I have had throughout the years, I believe prospective fathers’ concerns need to be taken more seriously, even though it is understandable that their concerns have been downplayed given the fear that men will regain control over the reproductive lives of women. I begin my discussion of men’s concerns by detailing the experiences of waiting-room men who accompany their partners to the abortion clinic. These stories illustrate that many men who acknowledge and accept that abortion remains a woman’s choice nevertheless suffer when abortions occur and yearn to be included in the conversation and given post-abortion counseling.

Of course, there are instances when a man favors an abortion and the woman does not. Philosopher Steven Hales argues that when a man favors an abortion but his partner chooses to bring the pregnancy to term and rear the child, the man should be granted a right of refusal—a right to opt out of all the social obligations and responsibilities that come with parenthood. This is meant to parallel a woman’s right to an abortion. Although Hales’s concerns should be taken seriously, his argument in favor of a right of refusal ultimately fails. The most difficult cases of disagreement, however, are like the one my student dealt with: when the prospective father wants to keep and raise the infant and the woman wants to abort. Although men should not be permitted to compel a woman to gestate, an appeal to virtue and care ethics helps us to consider how best to exercise the right to an abortion when the prospective father dissents.

Pregnancy and reproductive rights do profoundly affect the lives of individual women, but abortion is not solely a woman’s concern—any more than institutionalized sexism, rape culture, and domestic violence are. Although women are disproportionality affected by all these issues, the responsibility to address them falls on many shoulders. For example, because violence against women is typically perpetrated by abusive men, domestic violence is just as much a man’s issue as a woman’s. Abortion is also a man’s issue, a societal issue, a class issue, and an economic issue. If we are, as a society, truly concerned with understanding the prevalence of abortion, and if some of us are genuinely interested in curbing its occurrence, it is necessary to explore all of these aspects and to accept that responsibility for abortions extends beyond that of the individual woman procuring one. In this sense, it is a mistake to regard abortion as solely a women’s issue—it is a human issue.

As I was writing this manuscript, I struggled with what language I should adopt to refer to abortion choice supporters and detractors in a way that adequately respects their views. I have chosen not to use the term prolife because it implies that those who support abortion choice are anti-life. This certainly doesn’t describe me or any of my fellow abortion rights supporters. I wish that every pregnancy were embraced and every child wanted, that no woman were ever a victim of sexual violence or abuse, that our society were as pronatalist as it claims to be, and that educational and career opportunities were just as open to young and single mothers as they are to men and women without children. In other words, I would love a society that is as abortion-free as possible.

I have decided to use the traditional term prochoice to denote those who support access to abortion and anti-choice for those who do not. I recognize that this also has unfavorable implications. A colleague and good friend of mine who is against abortion rights takes issue with the term because he rejects abortion as even being part of the realm of permissible choices. It’s not that abortion is a bad choice, he tells me; it’s that he doesn’t think it should be a choice at all. Keeping this in mind, when I use these terms I mean them both as a short-hand